The Questions Nobody Taught You to Ask
The three questions that change what you choose to believe
I was at a group program event, doing shares and asks with people I'd just met.
One of the guys had been working with coaches for a few years, trying to find his direction. Around $200,000 across different programs, different frameworks, different promises. When it was his turn to share, that's what came out — still searching, still uncertain, no clearer on where he was going than when he started.
I asked him what he was feeling pulled toward.
He paused for a long time. Then he said he still had no idea.
I didn't say much after that. But I sat with it after the call, thinking about the programs I'd been in before, where I’d followed the templates and scripts, but the results never arrived. I'd spent real money too, and every time it hadn't worked, I'd blamed myself. Not enough effort. Not enough trust in the process. Not ready enough.
Around that same time, someone recommended a book by a coach who trains other coaches. It opened with a simple idea: a coach's job is to get you from point A to point B, and an end is essential - otherwise it's just guru grinding.
The trap finally had a name. And I promised myself I would never coach that way.
That's when I started asking different questions. Not just about coaching, but about any claim promising growth, results, or direction.
I even apply it to the claims I make as a coach.
I still get emails from programs promising amazing returns. The moment I say I'm not interested in paying thousands a month, the reply disappears. That's the tell. The solution only exists as long as you're paying them for it.
Why the Pitch Works
There's a reason these programs kept working on people like me, and it has nothing to do with being gullible.
Humans are built to absorb the norms of the environment around them. Evaluating every incoming claim from scratch is exhausting, so we outsource a lot of it to the authority of people and institutions that seem to know more than we do.
A confident voice with a track record and a community behind them triggers a shortcut in the brain: this person has figured something out, and I should probably listen.
That shortcut is useful most of the time. It's how any of us absorb expertise we don't yet have. Children do it with adults, apprentices do it with masters. The research on how humans process authority is consistent in that we defer to perceived expertise because it's efficient, and because it usually works.
The problem is that authority and accuracy aren't the same thing, and confidence isn't a substitute for correctness. And a system that worked for someone else, in a different context, with different constraints, may have nothing to do with what will actually work for you.
That's what those programs exploited. I was fooled by my normal human tendency to trust a credible-looking authority with a solution to a real problem I was struggling with. Once I understood the mechanism, I stopped blaming myself for falling for it and started asking how to catch it earlier next time.
What a Life Looks Like Without the Habit
Most of the beliefs guiding your decisions right now weren't chosen. They were absorbed.
From parents, teachers, employers, media, algorithms, friends who said something once that stuck. You didn't evaluate them when they arrived. You were busy, or young, or in a context where questioning felt unsafe, or simply hadn't been taught that it was an option.
The beliefs that go unexamined don't stay neutral, though. They compound every time we make a decision based on them.
A job review tells you at twenty-two that you're not a leader, and you spend the next decade arranging your career around that assumption without ever asking whether it was true. Or someone sells you on a recovery practice — ice baths, say, or a particular supplement — and you absorb the cost in time and money and discomfort for years without ever asking what the evidence actually shows for someone in your specific situation.
The cost of unexamined beliefs is more than one bad decision. It's a life quietly shaped by other people's influence on what's true for you. And the longer those beliefs go unexamined, the more they feel like facts rather than claims.
The Three Questions
The book I read on coaching gave me permission to expect a finish line with clear outcomes, and a point where the work is done. That shift changed how I evaluate everything that’s come after it.
Over time, I developed three questions that I now run almost any claim through, in almost any area of life.
The first is compared to what? Every claim implies a comparison. Better than what alternative, measured against what standard, tested in what conditions? If the comparison isn't named, it hasn't been made. "This method works" - compared to doing nothing? Compared to the method you were already using? The answer usually reveals whether the claim was built on evidence or an assumption.
The second is what's the cost? Every solution has a tradeoff. What are you giving up - time, money, other possibilities, your own judgment? Some solutions are designed to make you need more solutions. That's the most expensive kind.
The third is what's the evidence? Not confidence. What's the actual mechanism behind it, and what does the research show when you look past the testimonials and the audience size? Who benefited from the conclusion, and also what do the people who disagree say?
You don't need expertise to ask these questions. What matters is whether answers exist at all, and whether you're being told the whole truth. The habit is just pausing long enough to find out.
The Tell
Good systems hold up under scrutiny. Good coaches don't mind being questioned. Good claims can name their comparison, acknowledge their tradeoffs, and cite their evidence.
When you ask a good coach why they recommend something, they explain the mechanism. They tell you what the research shows, where it applies, and where it doesn't. They might say, "This works well for most people at your stage, but here's what to watch for."
They treat your question as part of the process, not a challenge to their authority.
The ones running a fear machine respond differently. They reframe your skepticism as resistance. They tell you that doubt is what's holding you back, that people who ask too many questions never make progress, that the clients who got results were the ones who trusted the process. The message underneath is usually the same. Your job is to follow. Evaluating is what people do when they don't really want results.
That reaction is the tell. What someone does when you ask the question tells you just as much as whatever answer they give.
If someone gets defensive when you ask, compared to what, or about the cost, or can't explain the evidence without pointing to testimonials, you have your answer. You don't need to hear anything else.
The question reveals the system. Ask it and see what you get back.
You Were Always Allowed to Ask
You're allowed to question things that have authority behind them. Asking for the comparison before accepting the claim and evaluating the evidence before buying the solution isn't disrespectful. It's just how you decide what you actually believe instead of inheriting it.
The examined belief is the one you own. Everything else is just something someone handed you before you knew to look at it closely.
What's one belief about yourself or your life that you keep struggling with, that you've never actually questioned?